Need some advice on a medical office complex where the utility billing is completely messed up. It's a 12-building campus with individual medical practices, but ConEd has been billing it as a single master-metered account for years. Some tenants reimburse the landlord based on square footage, others have separate agreements. Now they want me to figure out who owes what retroactively. This feels more like forensic accounting than utility auditing.
Medical office complex billing disaster
Kira, I feel your pain. Had something similar with a shopping center that had medical offices. The key is getting clear direction from your client about what they actually want - are they looking for utility billing errors, or trying to sort out tenant allocation issues? Those are two very different problems. I ended up limiting my scope to just the utility side and referred them to a CPA for the tenant disputes.
If you do decide to tackle the allocation piece, make sure you have solid documentation of each tenant's actual usage. Medical offices can vary wildly - a radiology practice uses way more power than a psychiatrist's office. Suggest they consider submetering for the future to avoid this headache again.
Thanks both. I think you're right about limiting scope - this could turn into a years-long project otherwise. Found about $15K in actual utility overcharges so far, which is probably enough to justify my fee without getting into the allocation mess. Sometimes you have to know when to walk away from scope creep.